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Spotlight: CoachO and the AAU Junior Olympics

Everyone is talking about the olympics right now - and why shouldn’t they, it’s a once-every-four-years-event and seeing these superhumans compete is the closest we get to having real superheroes, but today’s spotlight is focused on a different type of olympics… the annual Amateur Athletic Union Junior Olympic Games. Organizing this event can be quite a challenge and headache - between the officials, coaches, parents and 13,000 athletes who came in from all over the nation, it’s hard to stay on track and make sure everyone is informed. No one has more experience with this than Coach Oliver, the founder & meet director of CoachO.

CoachO is a one stop shop for the Track Community - the company handles the event registration, all of the event management, and is the leader in their space. While organizing the AAU Junior Olympic Games, CoachO has decided to use SendHub to help keep things on time, and organized. The biggest benefit? According to Coach Oliver, “time management and efficiency”.

“The most important thing is keeping everyone in the loop - that means a lot of calls, and reminder emails”, says Coach Oliver. “The problem I always had was the resulting phone tag - they called my landline, I tried them at home, but everyone is always on the go. No one checks their email from the track… but everyone gets text messages. It doesn’t matter where they are, and I don’t have to waste time tracking people down anymore. I just send one text message to the SendHub group and I know everyone is in the loop.”

At the Junior Olympics specifically, CoachO has been using the SendHub platform to communicate with the officials on their private channel, as well as send updates for the different events that are easily followed by coaches & parents with the text-to-join feature. “If the 100m dash is delayed, they send out a text message which is so great for the athletes… they don’t waste time warming up” says Carlene, mother of one of the competing athletes. “My grandparents found out via text that I broke a record, within a few minutes of me finishing the race - it’s so cool because they couldn’t be here but feel like they are” said Tyler Mapson, who broke the 100m dash record yesterday.

Fav tech gadget: my Motorola Droid X Fav part of SendHub: broadcasting & being able to organize contacts through text-to-joinFav track story: I started running track my senior year of high school - 2 months later I was the state champion, and undefeated school record holder (I still hold the school record… 30+ years and counting)Embarrassing prank call you fell for: oh boy…. one of athletes pranked me real bad once. I’d rather not tell. My wife will be mad if she has to relive it… he got us pretty good.

To learn more about CoachO, check out their website. We hope you enjoyed our Spotlight, and if you (or your company) want to be featured, send us a txt or email and tell us how YOU use SendHub :)